Audio Column by Michael Pearson

Earley crafts an elegant reinvention of the past The line between fiction and nonfiction is often blurred and in most cases arbitrarily drawn. In his new book, Somehow Form a Family, a collection of essays that reads like the cohering fragments of a memoir, Tony Earley walks gracefully along that line, writing about growing up in the South in the 1970s, the eccentricities of love in most...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

This month's new paperback releases include several books that would make good choices for reading groups. Our recommendations on the best selections are listed below. We hope these titles will inspire lively discussion in your book club. Double Down By Frederick and Steven Barthelme When their parents die, the Barthelme brothers inherit a considerable sum of money, which they proceed to...

Audio Column by Joanna Rakoff

1965, poet and memoirist Kathleen Norris a shy, sheltered 17-year-old left her home in Hawaii and traveled several thousand miles to Bennington College in Vermont. As Norris recounts in The Virgin of Bennington, her fourth memoir, the distance between Honolulu and New England was more than geographical. Though academically rigorous, Bennington in the '60s was a playground for wealthy,...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Having trouble getting your reading group organized? Never fear: there are several excellent books that can help you get your group off the ground. Because there are categories galore sci-fi and romance, poetry and biography, history and mystery finding a focus for your group can be as difficult as deciding what to read. The New York Public Library Guide to Reading Groups by Rollene Saal and...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

With a quarter-million reading groups currently active, it seems that more people than ever before are thinking and talking about books. Because one of the biggest challenges faced by a book club is deciding what to read, BookPage is happy to launch a monthly column spotlighting new paperback titles we feel would make great reading group selections. This new column will also list resources for...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

The cast of characters in Tim Green's new legal thriller, The Letter of the Law, ably performed by Keith Szarabajka, is a little more conventional but a little more lethal, too. Eric Lipton, a super-smart, super-suave, nationally known law professor, has been accused of the grisly murder and mutilation of a young law student. Casey Jordan, a beautiful, brilliant, top-notch defense attorney...

Audio Column by Pat Broeske

Like Leno and Letterman, he is a fixture of the after-hours cultural zeitgeist. But instead of delivering monologues and Top Ten Lists, Ted Koppel delves into issues. His name is synonymous with ABC's Nightline, the respected news show he has anchored for more than 20 years. Esteemed for his journalistic skills, especially his intrepid interviews, Koppel is a preeminent force in TV news....

Audio Column by James Webb

When you examine the life of a hero, you almost always find a story more complex than the one you anticipated. The most common perception of Gordon Cooper is that he was a wise-cracking fighter jock who became an astronaut. His new autobiography, Leap of Faith, tells a different story. Cooper's father was a military pilot and an attorney; his mother was a teacher who also loved to fly. He was...

Audio Column by Jeannie Joe

Ten Thousand Sorrows is the autobiography of Elizabeth Kim, a journalist from Southern California who began her life with a harrowing incident witnessing the murder of her mother in Korea. Having disgraced the family by bearing a mixed-race child with an American G.I., Kim's mother was hanged in an "honor-killing" conducted by her grandfather and uncle. As her mother explained to Kim,...

Audio Column by Amy Ryce

Dalai Lama, My Son: A Mother's Story is the autobiography of Diki Tsering, mother of the 14th Dalai Lama. She recently died in Darjeeling, India, where she had lived in exile with her family and the Dalai Lama. Being published at the same time is Transforming the Mind, by the Dalai Lama himself, (Thorsons, $20, 0722540302) which attempts to demonstrate ways of transforming difficult life...